About

The Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health is founded on the recognition that racism, rather than race, creates and maintains unjust and avoidable health inequities in countries around the world. The Commission will identify and promote the implementation of anti-racist actions and strategies by states, civil society actors, and global health institutions, in order to reduce structural discrimination through targeted research and collaborations that will foster policy dialogue within and across sectors that impact health and wellbeing.

Our Work

Within its three-year lifespan, the Commission has set out four charges:

1. Accurately diagnose the problem of racism in health

   This will be achieved by reviewing existing national and cross-national evidence on racism in health in a global context, and using a set of empirical analytical work, to further describe the effects of racial and ethnic discrimination and its intersections on health at a national and international level.

2. Identify best practices and actionable anti-racist strategies

   The Commission will achieve this goal by, among other activities, holding consultations with populations with lived experiences of structural discrimination in health, to discover how racist structures in select countries were addressed to close health equity gaps.

3. Compile a report of the Commission's findings, highlighting the strategies, tactics, and actionable lessons

   We expect the Commission's recommendations to be used to develop anti-racist approaches in the sphere of health policy and service delivery to ensure equitable and just health outcomes.

4. Widely disseminate the Commission's findings

   Broad dissemination will ensure that the anti-racist strategies and actionable lessons can be used by governments and health advocates to lobby for improved health outcomes for marginalised sections of the population in their respective countries and contribute a body of global knowledge to augment efforts to decolonise global health.

Structure

The co-chairs are supported by a team of commissioners who are distinguished global health and anti-racism scholars, leaders and activists — with expertise in diverse areas, such as public health, racial discrimination and racial justice, law, human rights, and policy.

The Secretariat for the commission is housed at Georgetown Univeristy’s Center for Global Health Policy & Politics a cross-campus collaboration between Georgetown Law and School of Health.